Outpost 31
by Crimsonbreath
Summary: Follows of from where the movie left off. MacReady's POV.
1. Whiskey

**Whiskey**

"How much longer you think the fire will last?"

I took a swig from the whiskey bottle resting by my feet. Almost empty.

"Childs?"

The figure slumped against the wall infront of me didnt reply. I might have shaken him if my hands werent nearly frozen to the bottle. I just called out again.

"Childs?!"

Nothing. He was dead, and I wasnt too far from joining him. Ah well, we did what we needed to do. That thing, whatever the hell it was, was dead. Unless... unless it had got to Childs. Maybe he was just playing dead... waiting for the rescue team. It didnt matter anymore. It couldnt freeze again, we'd blown up the areas deep under the outpost. It sure as hell couldnt freeze out here in the open, not well enough anyhow. I took another swig of whiskey, finishing the bottle. There wasnt anything left to do now. Everyone dead, no chance of that thing being in anyone now. Blair, Palmer, Childs, Copper, Norris, Bennings, Clark, Garry, Fuchs, Windows and Nauls. Come to think of it I never actualy saw Nauls die. Even if the thing didnt get him he would have been killed by the explosion. Unless he found another way out of the basement. Shit. I tried to move but I was too numb. Damit, I could have done all this for nothing if Nauls was infected. Ah who gives a fuck anyway? By the time the rescue team gets here, ill be long dead. Itl be their problem, not mine. Oh no, ill be right here, a human ice cube. Still, there is always a chance that it could find me and rip me to shreds, not as nice a way to go compared to being frozen. I tried to get up again, this time my legs responded to my brain and I stood up. Great MacReady, great, now what. I stumbled over to Childs. He had a ski mask hanging from his neck. I pulled the mask over his head, and put it over mine. Somehow it didnt feel right, taking things off dead men. I carried on looting Childs corpse anyway. He didnt have much worth taking. A revolver loaded with one bullet, I think it was Garry's, or maybe Blair's, I couldnt remember. Apart from the revolver, there wasnt much else. I took the revolver and stuffed it inside my coat. It might be handy if I needed a quick exit, other than that I couldnt realy think of another use for one bullet. Maybe God was trying to tell me something. I started walking off into the blizzard , but before I did, I hurled the empty whisky bottle into the dying fire. The fire roared in protest, and stayed strong.

"Stay warm Childs."

I couldnt see a damn thing, although I was wearing Child's ski mask. The visor just kept clouding up every five seconds, and prety soon I stopped wiping it. Instead I pulled the mask down to my neck, and let it rest on my chest. The wisdom of my plan was starting to fade. By plan I mean stumbling around in the snow looking for Nauls. Then I spotted the familier outline of my shack in the white distance. Well technicaly my shack was no longer there, all that remained was two walls and a door frame. At the time I didnt think to spare the shack, even though it could have offered no advantage whatsoever to... to... well whatever the hell that thing was. I faught against the wind and stumbled towards the charred remains of the shack. I didnt know what I expected to find there, but it sure beat the hell out of staying in the complete open, freezing my ass off. Upon walking under the door frame I saw... nothing. And I do mean nothing. No draws, no books, no papers. Not even my old chess computer. Come to think of it I think I destroyed that piece of crap anyway. Before all this shit happened. I got down on my hands and knees and started patting away the snow, half expecting to find a gun, or a map or somthing. No such luck. I carried on my hopeless search anyway, half out of bordem, and half because I didnt know what else to do. After a few minuits of searching I found a small hatch in the blackend wooden floor. I padded the snow of it and cranked it open with a piece of broken wood next to me. Upon opening my new discovery, I soon rememberd what it was. My secret stash. I used to stuff a few casual things in there. Whiskey, tapes, a knife, and I think... yeh a torch. I used to hide all that stuff down there because of Palmer mainly. He used to come up to my shack and have a drink sometimes. I didnt want him thinking I had any more whiskey than I was drinking with him, because I knew he'd steal it. Still he was a prety descent guy, little nuts maybe, but still descent. It's a shame that thing got to him... got to everyone. My track of thought was disterved by a loud crash down the steps behind me. It was hardly audioble over the blizzard, but there was definatley a crash. I looked at the few tapes I had in my stash, a lot of Stranglers stuff mainly. I didnt have anything to play them on now, but I scooped them up anyway, in the small chance that id find an undamaged tape player in the charred remains of the rest of the outpost. I also pulled out my torch, my knife, and a bottle of whiskey id drink later. That is if I survived checking out whatever that crash was...


	2. White Lies

**White Lies**

The blizzard was kicking up pace now. Judging by the dirty greyness of the sky it was about 6am. But that could have just been the snow, so fuck knows what time it realy was. I knew I should have bought a watch. There was a real nice one that Nauls was selling...

My mind was constantly flashing back to the past in a very crapy atempt at distracting me from thinking about what had made that crash. I held the knife close to my chest. It was a prety crap army knife. **Not **a swiss army knife. Nope, unfortunatley I spent all my cash on one of my closest freinds. Jack Daniels. Mind you, I never thought id realy need a knife. Not in the middle of the Antartic. But I suppose one should always be prepared, you know, just incase a shape-shifting, murdering, mutated alien bastard decides to play hide and seek with you. But im ranting. A tell-tale sign of insanity you know? I crept towards the stairs, for no real reason, as you wouldnt be able to hear a atmoic bomb go off in the mist of the blizzard. I popped my head around the corner and, gues who was there? None other than Nauls. Well at least I think it was Nauls.

"Nauls!?" I shouted, my voice barley hearable to myself. I waved my arm over my head like a mad man to try and get a response out of him. He just stood still, and then pointed straight at me and shouted somthing.

"B...nd... ou!!!"

I figured he shouted "behind you!" so I spun on my heels to look. There was nothing there, and by the time I turned back towards Nauls, he was gone. _Caught by the oldest trick in the book._

"Shit"

I ran down the burnt wooden steps and waded into the snow. It was about ankle high now. Id have to find some shelter or id be frozen stiff, just like Childs. A few light buoys swayed in the wind. There only seemed to be about a cluster of a few left. But it would do. I groped my way along the ropes that connected the small cluster until the line ended, just short of a small wooden tool shed. I never remembered seeing it much, so it must have been a few hundred yards out from the main base. It was fractionaly smaller than the one that we kept Blair in. Just big enough for a few cans of gas and a blow torch. But of course, when I kicked the door in, the cans were empty, and the blow torch was years past its prime. No matter, I just needed a place to get warm. I shuffled into the cramped shed, and closed the door. It creaked unsteadly on its hinges. They must have been at least forty years old, and my boot against the door musnt have had must of a positive effect on them. I sat down, well half sat half stood, as there wasnt enough room to sit, and unscrewed the lid from one of the bottles of whiskey I had stuffed under my coat. I took a swig of it and rested on a crooked wooden shelf nailed to the wall. I closed my eyes and let my head fall forward onto my chest. Then as I brought my head back up to say hello to my freind Jack again, I saw somthing rush past the cracks in the door. I stood up startled and pulled my knife out of my coat. And it was then that I realised the knife was blunt. After Id been carrying it around for three hours, not once had I checked wether it needed sharpening. The figure darted back past the door. _Now what, bludgen it to death with the hilt?_ I ignored my ever optomistic mind and crept towards the door. I waited until I heard soft footsteps right outside, over the roaring blizzard, and kicked the door open. I jumped outside and looked to see what I had knocked down. There, lying on its back in the snow was a person, clad in black with some kind of weird gogles on, and a small sub-machine gun pinned to its front.

"Hvem er du?!!" Its shouted, still lying on its back. It was evident it, was actualy a man. What he said though, I didnt have a fucking clue.

"HVEM ER DU?!!" He shouted again, this time louder. He was sat up now, his finger perched on the triger of his gun. Then it clicked. Id heard that language before...

Swedish or somthing, Norwegian! That was it. He pointed the gun at me.

"Me American" I said, almost shouting now, as the blizzard was roaring, and thats what most people tend to do when talking to foregin people. I pointed at myself too.

"Ahhh" He said. "I was rescue team. Am here to rescue people. Norwegian people from our base, I go there and find horrible things. I come here to look for rest of team"

"Things?" I said almost hurridly. I couldnt stand the thought of more of those monsters.

He nodded. "All people there were dead, very bad"

I sighed with relief, and helped the Norge up. It would take a while to explain everything.


	3. Killing By Moonlight

Killing By Moonlight

I had led my new Norge friend back into my little shed, and explained _everything_ to him. The chopper that flew by the base, the dog, the kennels, and all the other assorted un-belivable crap that had gone on afterwards. I was hard to believe anyway, but the fact that he hardly understood a word of what I was saying meant the norge was more than a little un-convinced. He shook his head at me, and pulled the shed door open and waded of through the snow. Fucking idiot. He wouldnt last two minuits on his own out there, especialy if he ran into Nauls. He hadnt even left me anything to protect myself, so I was still left with my blunt knife. Yippie ki-ai. I stood, somewhat dazed for a few moments, as I decided what the hell I should do. One of those things was on the lose and my only hope of backup thought I was insane. The product of my thoughts was to take another swig of whiskey. That would be the last swig id take. As I walked outside into the blizzard, I closed the door to the shed. By now it had recived a boot and a norwigeans face, so it was rocking on its hinges. Just as I was about to wade further out into the snow it fell on me with a crash."SHIT!" was all I could manage to say as I fell into the snow, the old wooden door perched on top of me like some kind of large square backpack. Well alright it just looked like a door squashing some sorry assed guy in the middle of a blizzard. I managed to push the door off of me and rolled over on my back. I stumbled up and felt a sharp pain in my stomach. I put my hand down the front of my coat and felt somthing wet. I brought my hand back up to my face and saw it was covered in a brownish liquid. Then it ocurred to me that I had all my whiskey shoved down my coat.

"Motherfu..."

After mourning over the loss of my whiskey I moved back along the light buoys, until I reached the shell of the building that I started of in. Maybe i'd find Nauls or that norge there, as it was one of the few landmarks that stood out in the blanket of snow. The fire that had started had died, a large area of ash now in its place. I sat down on some of the blackened wood. Then after a few minuits I realised somthing was missing. Childs body... It wasnt slumped against the wall like it was when I left it. Just then I heard somthing behind me. It was a scream... or somthing I can only describe as a scream. It was like someone with a bad chest hacking up his guts while trying to speak. Trying to shout. Half of me wanted to spin around and see what had made the noise, but the other half already knew what it was and just wanted it to finish me off. I obeyed the first half. I spun around on my ass and came face to face with Childs mutated body. His face was a twisted visage of a number of different people, _things_, that I hardly recognised. The rest of his body... I cant even begin to describe. It was covered in open sores and scars. Faces jutted out where his chest should have been. Limbs kicked out of him in all directions. Of course I hardly had any time at all to observe much else as he tried to rip my face of with one of his limbs. I caught it with my hand and pulled my knife out. It took my about twenty seconds to do all this, by which time another limb was already flying in my direction. I ducked it, still holding on to the other limb. Then I started sawing at the limb in my hand with my _blunt_ knife. Understandbly Childs, or rather what used to be Childs didnt appreciate my half assed atempt to mutalate him. He let out another scream/gurgle and let one of his other limbs fly at me. This time I didnt duck, and it hit me squarley in the face. I fell to the floor, loosing my grib on both the limb I had hold of and my knife. The knife scitered across the wood and deep into the snow. I rolled out of the way of another attack and got back onto my feet. Childs lined up for another attack, and then I suddenly had an idea. Hell it was a long shot, but it was my only shot too. I crammed my hand down my coat and pulled out a shard of glass from the broken whiskey bottles that were still inside my coat. I held the shard point first and charged into Childs. My attack had left a gaping hole in his 'chest'. It spurted a bit of greenish blood and then gushed it. But, suprise, suprise, that was all my little shard of glass had done. Childs or... whatever the hell you want to call him was still screaming and gurgling at me, seeming no more worse for wear than when I first saw him.

"Screw this!" I shouted and ducked backwards and started running through the snow. I kept on running until I couldnt even hear the blizzard over my own heartbeat. Then I stopped and looked back. I couldnt see a frigging thing, so I must have run at least a few hundred yards away from Childs. _Great now I can freeze to death instead of being ripped apart quickly..._


End file.
